This year marks 40 years of Roe v. Wade. That’s 40 years of protecting every woman’s fundamental right to make her own personal medical decisions. But plenty of politicians are still fighting to take that right away.
We won’t let them get away with it. On this 40th anniversary, those of us who trust women, who value their health and rights, have something to tell them: Roe is here for good.
40 years safe and legal. Let’s keep it that way.
Fashion is an art. It’s a lifestyle. For many of us, it’s what defines us. And it’s personal — to an extent, we can use it to create an image and an impression that further crystallizes who we are.
But what’s more personal than fashion is one’s health. For decades, we’ve tried to label how people feel about a very personal and often complex medical decision — abortion — with labels like “pro-choice” or “pro-life.” But over the past few years, more and more Americans have felt less comfortable having their personal beliefs about abortion be put into a box. What does “pro-choice” or “pro-life” even mean? And why can’t I be both?
In countries where abortion is illegal ─ which we are close to becoming ─ abortion rates are actually higher…Evidence shows that restricting access to safe, legal abortion care does not lower abortion rates. It just forces women to search for clandestine and unsafe abortion.
Since Roe, my human right to reproductive health has been protected.
– Eileen E.
I believe politicians should not be involved in a woman’s personal medical decisions about her pregnancy. #RoeAt40 http://bit.ly/Roe40th
Abortion is a deeply personal and often complex decision for a woman to make. You can’t make that decision for someone else.
Nobody knows a woman’s specific situation—we’re not in her shoes.
The Pew Research Center found that 63 percent of Americans said that Roe v. Wade should not be completely overturned, compared with 29 percent who said it should be. These opinions have changed little from surveys in 2003 and 1992, Pew reported.
Forty years after the Supreme Court protected abortion rights in Roe v. Wade, a new survey finds that white evangelicals remain the only major religious group that supports overturning the landmark ruling, even though most such groups find abortion morally wrong.
Because of Roe we have had 40 years of safe and legal abortion. Let’s continue to stand with Roe. #RoeAt40 http://bit.ly/Roe40th
I am the Catholic mother of 11 children…But I believe abortion is a constitutional right and an issue of privacy.
-Los Angeles Times, March 7, 2008
Because of Roe, I am a survivor, not a victim.
- Tina V.
I think that the labels pro-choice and pro-life put people in boxes. Abortion is not a boxed-in issue, it’s a very complex issue it has a lot of different parts to it, a lot of decision making goes behind a woman deciding to have an abortion so putting a label on it is just not fair.
Honor the 40th anniversary of Roe v. Wade by making a special $40 gift today. Your gift will help Planned Parenthood Federation of America protect and promote women’s health in the fights to come and wherever it is needed.
Can small minded idiot blokes stop telling women whether or not they’re entitled to abortions please? #enoughnow.
— Lily Allen, @lilyrosecooper
The decision whether or not to bear a child is central to a woman’s life, to her well-being and dignity. It is a decision she must make for herself.
When Government controls that decision for her, she is being treated as less than a fully adult human responsible for her own choices.
- Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, during her Senate confirmation hearings, 1993
No one knows what it’s like to walk in your shoes – not your boss, your neighbor, or your elected officials. So why are others trying to control your decisions? Don’t let them walk all over your reproductive health. No one knows what it means to take one step in your shoes, let alone why you make the decisions you do.
There is no more vital work to be done in this historic moment than stopping the rollback of women’s access to health care and self-determination.
- Reverend Harry Knox, President and CEO of The Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice
[W]e are first and foremost a mother and daughter, and we cannot stand idly by as birth control, family planning, and basic health care come under attack…Such a personal decision should be made by families, not by politicians.
We need common-sense solutions to the health issues we face throughout our lives. Planned Parenthood provides those solutions, helping millions of women each day, improving our communities and our families.
-Letter to the States on behalf of Planned Parenthood Federation of America
This right of privacy, whether it be founded in the Fourteenth Amendment’s concept of personal liberty and restrictions upon state action, as we feel it is, or, as the District Court determined, in the Ninth Amendment’s reservation of rights to the people, is broad enough to encompass a woman’s decision whether or not to terminate her pregnancy.
The detriment that the State would impose upon the pregnant woman by denying this choice altogether is apparent.
– Justice Harry Blackmun, Roe v. Wade decision
And what I believe very strongly is that every woman has the right to decide what she can do with her body. That seems like a no-brainer to me, but it’s not to some politicians…
With jobs bills waiting on legislative calendars, the unemployment rate at a crisis level and many Americans losing their homes, I find it incredibly frustrating that we’re being forced to spend so much time and energy (and, yes, money) defending something as basic as self-determination.
No woman can call herself free who does not own and control her body.
- Margaret Sanger, Birth Control Review, March 1919
On January 22, 1973, the U.S. Supreme Court confirmed that the constitutionally protected right to privacy includes every woman’s right to make her own personal medical decisions, without the interference of politicians.
Abortion is a vital service that communities of women have always come together to protect.
This month, we come together to celebrate 40 years of access and choice in the US and we will continue to stand strong with all communities to protect this right.
The SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Justice Collective amplifies and strengthens the collective voices of Indigenous women and women of color in their fight for reproductive justice. The Collective was formed in 1997 to educate women of color on Reproductive and Sexual Health and Rights, and works towards the access of health services, information and resources that are culturally and linguistically appropriate.
Copyright © 2013
